Are you thinking nothing? Or are you thinking nothing of importance? In today’s day and age, it’s more likely to be the latter (the former, as it turns out, is extremely difficult and takes years of practice to accomplish). Recently I learned of Hong Kong’s dai tau juk , or the head-down tribe — people who are found glued to their increasingly smart smartphones for the most part of the day.
As someone who likes to think of herself as an acute observer, I hate to admit that this trend is gradually permeating into the Indian milieu. It pains me even more to admit that I am one of those people. But I take a smidge of pride in the fact that I have been actively trying to not fall deeper and deeper into the pit of distraction and despair that social media and technology in general have become.
A few nights ago, France vs Argentina was live on television. While I don’t particularly mind watching football by myself, I enjoy it more watching it with my father. But a few nights ago, when the first knockout game was on and my father refused to move his eyes away from his phone, I snapped and called him out on it. I didn’t do it straight away; but soon it was time for dinner and he hadn’t moved.
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My family has an unstated rule of having no phones or work at the table while eating (one final effort to prevent technology from invading our personal lives), but my mother has long given up on persuading my father.
France and Argentina were giving each other a hard time on the field and I was bothered because I was missing the interesting facts about the game my father usually sprinkled in the course of those 90 minutes. After I snapped, my words sharp and curt, my father instantly put down his phone, seemingly breaking out of a trance. He realised his mistake and apologised, a little surprised to be at the receiving end of his own younger daughter’s annoyance.
‘Head-down tribe’ has become a (pseudo) triggering phrase in our household — while it doesn’t actually set any of us off, it does remind us of the fact that our eyes could definitely do with a change of scenery. By calling each other out on our weakness to fall prey to the physical clickbait that is a mobile, at least we are trying. If I’m being perfectly candid, its impact usually doesn’t last longer than about half an hour, but it’s better than just blatant ignorance.
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On the same football night, I called my father “the leader of the head-down tribe” — the clever part of this trick is that it gets the message across and also defuses the tension with good-intentioned-news-aware-humour.
Yesterday when I failed to respond to my father’s question because I was busy with my own phone, he said: “Aha! Looks like you’ve stolen my crown. You are now the leader of the head-down tribe.”
In my journey — for the lack of a better word — towards reducing technological invasion into my life, I made another upsetting observation. Forgive me for sounding like cliché’s spokesperson, but I realised that I had been missing out on what was beyond my 5.99-inch screen. I had forgotten what it was like to look outside of the car window and see strange faces walking past, whizzing trees, forgotten to watch the sun set differently every day behind the two tall skyscrapers outside my window, forgotten how nice it felt to simply stare at the dark ceiling of my room and fall asleep to the rhythmic humming of the fan at night when everyone on my side of the world was quiet. I felt as though I was on my way to becoming a robot with artificial intelligence.
Ever since my introduction to the dai tau juk , however, every day is an effort to prevent myself from transforming into a smartphone zombie. Hopefully, someday in the future I’ll be out for brains and not notifications!
sukritilakhtakia@gmail.com